Trial By Fire (2 page)

Nor was there any kind of order from Shippler. Any actions taken within Shippler’s platoon were the result of decisions being made by each Bradley commander, not by Shippler. Not that there was much that he could have done. The first volley of tank fire had “destroyed” two of the Bradleys. As soon as the commanders of those two vehicles realized that the orange kill light was continuously flashing, they stopped, cut off their smoke generator, put their gun tube over the rear deck, and waited. The other two Bradley commanders maneuvered wildly in an effort to hide in their own smoke while seeking cover. The tanks, able to determine who was left, turned their attention to the two fleeing Bradleys.

The chase lasted less than a minute. In the next volley, the Bradley on the left was hit, its kill light flashing without pause. The last Bradley survived several near misses, indicated by three quick flashes on the kill light. In the end, however, despite the wild gyrations, sharp turns, and the efforts of the Bradley’s puny smoke generator, it too was overwhelmed as every tank on the mountain that could.tracked it and fired.

Disgusted, Wittworth turned his back on the massacre of Shippler’s platoon and walked back to his Humvee. As he did so, he pondered what he would say to Shippler when he saw him next. After all, Shippler’s maneuver had been, according to the manual, correct. After crossing the Cowhouse Creek, he had regrouped, switched to bounding overwatch when they had reached the open area, and then moved into traveling overwatch with his whole platoon when there appeared to be no danger.

Wittworth had hoped that Shippler would make a high-speed mad dash for Manning Mountain. But that would have been unorthodox, a gamble based on knowledge gained from fighting over the same ground time and time again and not the application of sound tactics. And there was no guarantee that that gamble would have paid off. After all, the tanks had come on rather fast. For the gamble to succeed, Shippler would have had to depend on the tank company commander to make an error or be slow.

Basing one’s plans on hope or depending on the enemy to make mistakes is a bad habit. Still . . .

When he reached his Humvee, Wittworth swung the door open and prepared to climb in. His driver twisted to the right in his seat, switched the two radios off to prevent the electrical surge of the ignition from damaging the radios, started the engine, and then turned the radios back on. Instead of getting in the Humvee, Wittworth stopped, told his driver to wait, and went back to the rock where he had been sitting to retrieve his breakfast. Approaching the rock, he noticed something moving on and around the brown aluminum foil package. Stopping, he looked down and watched as a horde of ants assaulted the remains of his ham and chicken loaf. With a sigh and a muffled curse, Wittworth kicked the foil package with all his might before he turned away and headed back to his Humvee.

As much as the slaughter of Shippler’s platoon and the loss of his breakfast pissed him off, they were nothing to compare to what Wittworth knew awaited him back in the rear. Today was “The Day,” the day when Second Lieutenant Nancy Kozak, the first female to be commissioned as an infantry officer, was to report to Wittworth’s company. The there thought of females assigned to combat arms, let alone one assigned to his company, still was enough to send Wittworth on an emotional roller coaster that took him from blind anger to almost total despondency.

As he and his driver rode back to the rear in silence, Wittworth wrestled with his own feelings and beliefs. Though he had known that this great experiment in equal opportunity had been coming for over six months, he had done little to mentally prepare himself. The briefings by the Test and Evaluation Command officials and data collectors, Wittworth’s chain of command, and the Equal Opportunity reps from the Department of Defense had explained how the twelve-month evaluation would work. They had even tried to provide a system for everyone involved to overcome their prejudices through a series of rap sessions, educational seminars, and “encounter” groups. These efforts, however, had failed for the most part. Instead of eliminating prejudices, they had only served to harden them in some of the men in Wittworth’s company, Wittworth included.

As hard as he might try, he could not separate out emotions from the problem. Why in the hell, he thought, is it necessary to allow women in combat arms branches? As it was, a number of good infantry officers were being forced to turn in the coveted crossed-rifle brass in order to fill vacancies in combat support and combat service support branches, branches where women already served without problem. Why the people in Washington couldn’t leave well enough alone, and let things continue as they had been since the United States Army had been created, baffled Wittworth. It was as if someone in the Department of Defense wanted to see just how much shit they could pile onto combat arms officers before their jobs became impossible to carry out.

Breaking out from the rough and rutted trails, Wittworth’s driver crossed the main tank trail and turned the Humvee south onto West Range Road. Wittworth didn’t notice. His mind was still wrestling with how he would greet Kozak, an event now only a few hours away. That, coupled with the poor performance of Shippler’s platoon, the loss of his breakfast to ants, and the oppressive heat, conspired to crush any tact Wittworth might have begun the day with. And tact was one commodity that people who knew him would never accuse Wittworth of having an overabundance of.

Main Post, Fort Hood, Texas

0745 hours, 28 June

Turning her light blue Chevy Suburban from Hood Road onto Headquarters Street, Second Lieutenant Nancy Kozak slowed and prepared to turn into the parking lot across the street from Building 108. To say that she was nervous would not do justice to Lieutenant Kozak’s state of mind at that moment. After years of physical and mental preparation, The Day had arrived, the day she was reporting into her first unit. All the theoretical exercises in leadership, “what if?” drills, and “how to” training sessions that had permeated the military instruction at West Point and during her officer’s basic course were over. From here on in, everything was for real. No role-playing, no hypothetical situations, no neat, clean classroom solutions. Her decisions and actions would affect real people and be judged by professional soldiers, those entrusted to her care, those who were her appointed superiors, and those who considered themselves her peers.

As if the simple act of reporting to her first unit wasn’t difficult enough, Nancy Kozak would also have to deal with the trauma of being the first female to be commissioned in the U.S. Army as a combat arms officer.

For the next year, she and the unit she was reporting into would be the subject of an evaluation that would attempt to answer the question of whether it was possible for American women to serve effectively as frontline soldiers.

The evaluation plan was quite simple in concept. Three units—one tank battalion, one mechanized infantry battalion, and one field artillery battalion—would receive a number of female officers and enlisted personnel.

Within these units, some companies would remain all male.

These were the “baseline” companies. Other companies, referred to as

“mixed units,” would consist of both male and female soldiers. Special teams from the Army’s Test and Evaluation Command would study the performance of both the baseline companies and the mixed companies while those companies conducted their normal training and duties. The final test, though no one referred to it as such, would be a rotation to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, at the end of the one-year evaluation. Based upon the performance of the units throughout the year and at the National Training Center, and the observations of the evaluation teams, a decision, or so it was hoped, would be made concerning the future of women in combat arms.

To start the evaluation, a number of female officers, one assigned to each of the mixed companies, were to report in first. It was felt that the female officers would be better able to handle the initial shock and “difficulties”

that were anticipated when females were introduced into the combat units. The female officers had three months to adjust to the unit, and allow the unit to adjust to them, before the enlisted female soldiers began to arrive. In this way, the female officers would have an opportunity to achieve a level of competence and acceptance, making it easier for the enlisted females.

Unstated in either the evaluation plans or the briefings was the belief that a buffer would be needed between the male officers and noncommissioned officers and the enlisted females. The female officers would serve as this buffer, ensuring that training, discipline, and duty assignments were handled in a fair and even-handed manner. Otherwise, there was always the possibility that the all-male leadership would sabotage the evaluation by harassing the females or pushing them beyond accepted limits. While there was concern over the fact that the female officers were junior to everyone, it was generally accepted that this was preferable to introducing female officers of higher rank, lacking combat arms experience and baseline training, into the evaluation. Besides, as the briefers in the Pentagon pointed out, you can’t get any closer to combat than at platoon level, so that was where the focus of the evaluation had to be.

So Second Lieutenant Kozak was exercising extreme care in everything she did. From reading everything she could to prepare herself technically and tactically, to obeying every traffic law on post. Even the manner in which she dressed was taken into account. After sliding into a parking slot and turning off the engine of her conservative and nondescript car, Kozak paused before getting out. Turning the rearview mirror toward her, she gave herself the once-over one more time before leaving the safety of her car.

Her auburn hair, normally worn long, was pulled back and pinned to the back of her head. The length of her hair had been a matter of concern and great debate, not only for herself, but for her fellow female classmates at West Point.

Many had opted to get it cut short rather than mess with it when in uniform or in the field. Others had it cut so that, wet or dry, it fell just above the bottom of the uniform collar, which was the extreme limit that regulations permitted. A few, like Kozak, couldn’t part with all of their hair. “After all,” she had once told a friend, “everyone knows you’re a woman, so why try to hide it.” So they tolerated the inconvenience of washing it, tangling with it, and putting it up when in uniform so that they could maintain their pride and joy. Through trial and error, and with a lot of help from other female officers, Kozak had learned how to deal with her long hair in and out of the field. She of course had no way of knowing what her company commander would say about it.

Technically, so long as she wore it above the bottom of her uniform collar, he could say nothing. Just in case, however, she had prepared herself mentally to get a butch cut if it became an issue.

The makeup she wore was light and hardly noticeable. Like her hair, this too had been a subject of great concern. For the last two weeks, she had debated with herself as to whether it would be wise to wear makeup when she reported. Just as she convinced herself of the wisdom of not wearing any, she found herself rejecting her own decision. In the end, she opted for a compromise of sorts. The foundation she wore was the sheerest she could find and applied with a light touch. A single coat of mascara, also applied with a light hand on uncurled lashes, was her only eye makeup. There was no blush and only a hint of lipstick to add a little color to her otherwise pale face. In addition, in order to keep from drawing any more attention to herself than she needed to, Kozak had avoided the use of any type of cologne, perfume, or anything that gave off a strong feminine scent. What she didn’t appreciate, as she prepared herself, was that many of her products, from shampoo to face cream, gave off a decidedly feminine fragrance that lingered with her. Continuous use had made her so accustomed to them that she didn’t notice it. Unfortunately, in the all-male world of a mechanized infantry company where the faint scent of diesel mixed with the musky smell of male sweat and gun oil permeated everything, Kozak would stand out no matter what she did.

Satisfied and yet not satisfied with the job she had done on her face, she checked the brass of her uniform one more time. The two gold bars of a second lieutenant sat mounted five-eighths of an inch in from the outside of the shoulder loops. Set exactly midway between the seam of the sleeve and the button that held the shoulder loop in place was a green felt tab one and five-eighths of an inch wide, a leadership tab that designated her as a leader of a combat unit. The leadership tab was topped off with the unit crest of the 13th Infantry Regiment. On each lapel of her green class A uniform blouse, exactly five-eighths of an inch above the cut of the lapel, were the brass letters u.s. Five-eighths of an inch below the cut of the lapel was the symbol of the infantry, a brass representation of two model 1842 muskets, commonly referred to as the crossed rifles.

Were it not for these two highly polished pieces of brass, each weighing less than an ounce, Nancy Kozak’s appearance at Fort Hood that morning would have been routine. She would have been just another female officer, representing fourteen percent of the Army’s total, reporting for duty. But, by her own hand and drive, she was different. She was, and always would be, the first. In no small measure, the future of women in the Army depended on what she, and five other females commissioned in the combat arms, did in the next year.

Overwhelmed by this sense of history, Kozak opened the door and got out. Standing upright, she slung her regulation black purse over her shoulder, smoothed her skirt, pulled the blouse of her uniform down, and set out for Building 108 to sign in.

Building 108, Fort Hood, Texas

0755 hours, 28 June

Casually sprawled on a chair in the first row of the room where he had been directed, Captain Harold Cerro waited for the admin clerks to settle down and begin their arduous task of inprocessing a new batch of officers.